NYC Teachers for Obama

The teachers union has been handing out thousands of Barack Obama campaign buttons to its members, sparking a clampdown by education brass. The Department of Education - which has a long-standing policy barring teachers from wearing campaign buttons in schools - is set to send out an e-mail this week from Schools Chancellor Joel Klein laying down the law. "Schools are not a place for politics and not a place for staff to wear political buttons," said department spokeswoman Ann Forte. "We don't want a school or school staff advocating for any political position or candidate to students and we don't want students feeling intimidated because they might hold a different belief or support a different candidate than their teachers."

United Federation of Teachers official LeRoy Barr told his members in a recent e-mail that union chief Randi Weingarten is fighting the DOE decision. Officials of the union - which has endorsed Obama - said they didn't know of any schools where button-wearing teachers were told to zip it, but they said they were exploring the matter "to ensure members' rights to free speech and expression."

While department officials said the courts are on their side in the matter, many city teachers say their right to wear partisan buttons is a matter of free speech. Several cited a landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling involving students who planned to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. It affirmed that constitutional rights don't get dropped "at the schoolhouse gate." "It's not teaching kids to vote for Obama; rather, it's showing them the democratic process in action," said Patrick Compton, a social-studies teacher at Lafayette HS in Brooklyn, who said he has been wearing an Obama button handed out by the union. "It is shocking to me, truly, that in this day and age, the school system wants to diminish, rather than increase, participation in our democratic system."

Other teachers said they were extremely careful not to let free speech morph into any kind of partisan preaching. "As long as you don't preach to the children about who you should vote for, I don't see anything wrong with it," said Ellen Eisenger, a teacher at PS 35 in Queens. "It's still America."

Last week, employees at the University of Illinois received an e-mail forbidding them to wear partisan political buttons on campus, while teachers at a high school near Santa Cruz, Calif., agreed to remove their "Educators for Obama" buttons in class after complaints from a parent who supports John McCain.

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Cane is needed again to give children a lesson say a fifth of British teachers

A fifth of teachers would like to see the cane re-introduced in Britain's schools, research has found. They said children's behaviour had deteriorated to the point that caning would be an effective punishment. The survey of more than 6,000 teachers by the Times Educational Supplement found that a fifth supported the right to use corporal punishment in extreme cases.

Judith Cookson, a supply teacher, said: “Children's behaviour is absolutely outrageous in the majority of schools. I am a supply teacher, so I see many schools, and there are no sanctions. There are too many anger management people and their ilk who give children the idea that it is their right to flounce out of lessons for time out because they have problems with their temper. They should be caned instead.”

Ravi Kasinathan, a primary teacher who also “strongly” supported the idea, said: “There is justification, or an argument, for bringing back corporal punishment, if only as a deterrent. I believe some children just don't respond to the current sanctions.”

The survey suggests that support for corporal punishment is strongest among secondary teachers: 22 per cent back the idea, compared with 16 per cent of primary teachers. It also uncovers much lower support among heads and deputy and assistant heads: 12 per cent, compared with 22 per cent of teachers.

John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Thankfully, corporal punishment is no longer on the agenda, except in the most uncivilised countries. I am sure that this barbaric punishment has disappeared for ever.”

An official at the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: “Violence against children is clearly unacceptable and illegal.”

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Soviet mentality lives on in Australian teachers' unions

HASN'T the belief that private equals evil and public equals good long passed its use-by date? Apparently not for the troglodytes in the teachers unions who are still entrenched in a class war that no longer interests the rest of thecommunity. At the September 12 meeting of the TAFE Teachers Association council, some union warriors requested "as a matter of urgency" that an important issue be resolved. Is it acceptable, they asked, for a union representative to send their children to a private school or to a private provider competing with TAFE? Is it acceptable for a union representative to have once taught in a private school or worked for a private provider that competes with TAFE? You get the gist. If you have come in contact with private education, you have been tainted with evil.

Fortunately, the general-secretary of the NSW Teachers Federation, John Irving, is not interested in these archaic union battles. The point man for policy in the NSW Teachers Federation told The Australian on Friday that he is "not interested in vetting people" on the basis of which school their children attend.

Instead of drafting a policy precluding people who send their children to private schools, Irving is thinking about asking those who seek positions within the NSW teachers union to sign a declaration that they have actively demonstrated a commitment to public education. If that comes to pass, many of those who sign such a declaration will be committing perjury if they sign. Why? Because many within the teachers unions have worked tirelessly to obstruct reform and improvement within public education. And the irony is that the obstinacy of these white-collar educational diehards against reform of public education will lead only to a greater exodus of students from public schools to private schools.

Consider the union reaction to the Rudd Government's education revolution outlined last month by the Prime Minister and his deputy, Education Minister Julia Gillard. Reforms to make education more transparent by mandatory reporting of student results, allowing parents to compare school performance? Opposed by unions. Transparency and accountability reforms that will enable the most disadvantaged schools to be identified and receive extra funding of $500,000 for your average school so that they may improve? Opposed by unions. Moves to give greater autonomy and flexibility for principals to hire staff? Opposed by unions. Moves to introduce performance-based pay for teachers to encourage better teachers? Opposed by unions. Moves to introduce a national curriculum so that students moving between states and territories can access a seamless education system? Opposed by unions. Queensland Teachers Union boss Steve Ryan summed up the reforms as "beyond insulting".

It's not news that teachers unions remain the single biggest hurdle to improving public education in Australia. They are wedded to an archaic public system that has long protected teachers, not promoted the interests of students. What is news is a federal Labor government is apparently willing to tackle the union influence that has long infected state and federal politics. The Howard government talked about reforming public education but achieved very little.

So it was powerful symbolism and pragmatic politics for Gillard, from Labor's left faction, to pose the killer question to union critics: "I cannot understand why public institutions such as schools should not be accountable to the community that funds their salaries and running costs." If any other group, drawing on the public purse, were exempt from disclosure and accountability, union activists would be the first to cry foul, demanding to know what was being hidden from the taxpaying public.

But reason cannot compete with union ideology. Neither can evidence that Australia ranks 23rd among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development industrialised countries for students who finish Year 12 or a trade equivalent and talking about the consequences of this long-tail educational underachievement for 25 per cent of Australian students. Nor will union diehards such as Ryan or his friends at the Australian Education Union be swayed by Gillard's laudable interest in school accountability reforms undertaken by New York's schools chancellor Joel Klein that have lifted student performance. If student achievement mattered, unions would have sided with these sorts of reforms long ago.

Left-wing union types like to wear their commitment to compassion and disadvantage on their sleeves. But it is fraudulent rhetoric when used by teachers unions that are patently not fighting for disadvantaged students. Opposing Rudd's reform condemns those who cannot afford to escape the worst aspects of public education to disadvantage for life.

In truth, the unions are fighting for their own vested interests. They oppose transparency and accountability because it would weed out the substandard schools and second-rate teachers. They oppose greater flexibility for principals because it would remove union leaders from teacher selection processes. They oppose private education because the competition it brings challenges the public school system to lift its performance.

It's no surprise that teachers unions would protect their interests. That's what the more militant unions do. The challenge is for Rudd to prove the Labor Government is serious about its education revolution by exposing the anti-reform union agenda. Archaic union leaders who refuse to budge on these reforms need to named and shamed as obstructionists who care little about students and more about ancient class warfare. They then can be replaced by more sensible union leaders genuinely committed to student achievement within the public education system.

The real challenge is for the PM's new federalism. The Rudd Government failed to garner agreement on plastic bags from state governments. How will it wangle agreement on education reform from state Labor governments beholden to teachers unions? When the West Australian teachers union won pay increases of 21.7 per cent earlier this year, union boss Anne Gisborne boasted that "one of the strongest elements behind this has been the political campaigning that our members have had on track for eight to 10 weeks". With an election looming, union influence prevailed. Outside education, it's the same in other states. Unions rolled attempts by the NSW Iemma government to reform the electricity industry.

Keen to stand apart from union influence, the Prime Minister will have many chances to prove his mettle. On three critical fronts - industrial relations, the Australian Building and Construction Commission and education - the hostility to Rudd's reforms will come less from the federal Opposition and more from Labor's traditional brother in arms: the unions. Aggressive union campaigns and behind-the-scenes union powerbroking aimed at derailing Rudd's reforms are already under way. If Rudd and Gillard fail to stand up to unions early on, they will suffer the same ignoble fate as craven state governments where brute union power has snuffed out critical reforms.

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